NEWS

Arctic Monkeys return with their sixth album, entitled ‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’ on Friday the 11th of May 2018. Produced by James Ford and Alex Turner, the album was recorded in Los Angeles, Paris and London.

Their first release since 2013’s ‘AM’ finds the band intent on continuing to explore new musical terrain with each album. ‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’ups the ante in a big way; it is a bold and brilliant album reflecting Turner’s ever more comprehensive creative vision.

The LP comes with a gatefold sleeve, lyric and photo booklet and exclusively via the AM Store, on silver vinyl. It will also be available on standard CD, vinyl and digitally. You can pre-order and pre-save the album here.

Melody’s Echo Chamber (aka Melody Prochet) has confirmed her second album Bon Voyage will be released on June 15th. Made up of seven expansive tracks, Bon Voyage marries Melody’s breathless soprano to the wildest sonic excursions, always pinned to an emphatic, clattering groove as she delivers her fables of spiritual search and emotional healing in multiple tongues (French, English and Swedish).

Bon Voyage is a collaborative record between Prochet and Dungen’s Reine Fiske and The Amazing’s Fredrik Swahn with Melody sculpting and producing the sessions as well as encouraging the players around her to experiment, often with instruments that might be less familiar to them. It also features special guests Gustav Esjtes and Johan Holmegaard (both from Dungen) and Nicholas Allbrook (Pond).

Today, Melody is pleased to share ‘Breathe In, Breathe Out’ from the forthcoming album. Having gone back to her childhood music conservatory to learn drums aged 30, ‘Breathe In, Breathe Out’ is the first song Melody played drums on. Prochet adds about the track “It’s a special one. I’m used to recording with masters of drums and accepting my drum playing as not perfect but with the right intention was a big deal to me”.

Directed by Daniel Foothead, the animated video invites us into a mystical and magical universe as we follow a pilgrim trying to reunite with his source of inspiration and light, his muse.

A musical journey of discovery, Bon Voyage delves deep into the collective musical psyche of Melody and her Swedish fellow travellers, who she met one serendipitous summer’s afternoon in Angers back in 2015. Prochet describes the members of Stockholm’s premier neo-psychedelic overlords Dungen as “soulmates and extreme beings, uncompromisingly intense and sensitive.” These kindred souls daydreamed about making music together, and then Prochet took matters into her own hands and moved to Sweden in the winter of 2016 to begin their adventure. Working in the woods of Solna, Melody says: “Swedish nature helped me to breathe and soothed me in times of anxiety. I had a majestic forest with a lake three minutes’ walk from my home. Recording sessions were a break in our lives, an escape from our frustrations as young adults, parents, musicians and embittered life jugglers. What transpired was a kind of modern fairytale full of duality: beautiful and disenchanted, happy and painful, internal and external, childish and mature, but also violent and measured. We had no structure and no limits and we stepped out of our comfort zones.”

Bon Voyage arrives more than five years after Melody’s Echo Chamber’s debut, and it is the soundtrack to a trip back from the brink, the sound of spiritual renewal, and a pilgrimage to the sonic outer limits.

It was the summer of 1992 and Todd Brashear invited his friend Will Oldham to come live with him in Bloomington, Indiana where Brashear was in the Audio Engineering program at IU. Oldham moved into a house with Brashear and his schoolmate Grant Barger, and soon they began working on music all together. They set up a weekend session at the house with Barger at the controls, using his 8-track cassette recording machine (not to be confused with the crappy 8-track tape format popularized in the 1970s). They invited David Pajo to come up from Louisville to play on the session. There were three songs to tackle: “For the Mekons et al”, “Two More Days”, and “Drinking Woman”. Brashear played drums and lap steel and sang harmonies, Barger played bass and Pajo played lead guitars (both acoustic and electric). Oldham sang and played acoustic guitar. The house was an older house with high ceilings and wood floors, and Barger’s engineering was impeccable so that everything sounded good and felt in line with an aesthetic that felt like a true realization of what was in Oldham’s mind.

Around the same time, Brashear and Oldham scheduled a session in the IU studios, with Brashear as engineer. Britt Walford and Brian McMahan came up from Louisville and, there in the fancy studio using 16-track 2” magnetic tape, the group recorded “Ohio River Boat Song” and “Riding”, with McMahan playing drums, Brashear playing bass and Walford playing electric guitar. This sound was big and clean and the songs had a polish to them that differed significantly from the house recording with Barger. Beautiful, though maybe not quite the kind of recordings Oldham was beginning to want to be a part of. The Barger session was all about assembling people and getting the takes right together as an ensemble, while the Brashear session was more about studio craft. One could listen to “Drinking Woman” and hear the musicians clearly, almost imagine one is in the room as the song happens. “Ohio River Boat Song” has more of an out-of-time-and-place vibe happening. Brashear and Barger were both great engineers, and the methods and technology used for the two sessions differed significantly.

The cover of the single was designed by Paul Greenlaw, a great visual and musical artist from Rhode Island. Greenlaw used an archival aerial photograph of some unnamed coastline over which he superimposed lettering fashioned from a photograph Oldham had taken of Mekons violinist Susie Honeyman (when Greenlaw started the design, the idea was still for “For the Mekons et al” to be the A-side). The lettering spelled out “palace songs”. In the lower-right corner of the front cover was a sad yellow bird that Greenlaw had drawn. The back cover featured a Greenlaw elephant, a “Palace Brothers” banner, a fleur-de-lis (symbol of Louisville, KY) and a photo from the “Drinking Woman” session of me, Brashear and Pajo. There’s an alphabetical listing of contributors to the existence of the record, as Oldham was still figuring things out and didn’t know how best to attribute the existence of any fraction of the whole. Only black and yellow inks were used on the sleeve in order to keep costs down. The label design was a throwback to old-school labels: royal blue with metallic silver ink. Dan Osborn is the Drag City graphics admiral and he executed the label design beautifully.

Oldham shot a video for “Ohio River Boat Song” on 16mm black-and-white film using a wind-up Russian camera. The footage centered around the early morning horse exercises at Churchill Downs in the spring. Osborn and Oldham edited the footage at Osborn’s office in the HARPO compound.

“For the Mekons et al” came out later on the compilation HEY DRAG CITY. “Two More Days” came out on a compilation called LOVE IS MY ONLY CRIME, released in Europe. “Riding” was re-arranged and re-recorded for the record THERE IS NO-ONE WHAT WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU. The recording of “Riding” from the Bloomington session was included on LOST BLUES AND OTHER SONGS.

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Palace Brothers - There Is No-One What Will Take Care Of You - Streaming Now

Once the “Ohio River Boat Song” single went into production, the Palace Brothers were asked for a full-length record. Over the summer in Bloomington, Oldham had been writing songs and was thrilled to find that these songs might have a welcome place in the world, at least when it came to there being a label willing to release them. At the end of summer, Oldham moved back to Providence, Rhode Island, where he was ambivalently pursing a college degree in semiotics. He went to ethnomusicology professor Jeff Titon and suggested an independent study class, supervised by Titon, in which Oldham would work on a set of songs derived in many ways from a variety of historical styles, forms and sources. Oldham worked on many of the songs with musicians Matt Fanuele, Paul Greenlaw, John Davis, Mark Cummins, and Colin Gagon. Davis introduced Oldham to the records of the Royal Trux, and at one point during the fall the Trux came through Providence on tour. The band stayed over at the house Oldham shared with writer Bob Arellano.

Oldham and Brashear scheduled the recording session for December of 1992 in Kentucky. Grant Barger would engineer, using his 8-track cassette rig. There were two recording locations: a house on Ohio Street (which street has since lost its name to the larger Frankfort Avenue, of which it is effectively an extension) owned by Steve Driesler and a cabin outside of Brandenburg, KY, called “Merciful”. Brian McMahan and Britt Walford would play on the record, along with Barger, Brashear, Oldham and Paul Greenlaw. Brashear, Barger, McMahan and Walford traded off instruments (inspired, in part, by the Bad Seeds records of the 1980s), while Oldham stuck to singing and playing the guitar and Greenlaw played the banjo. Greenlaw was a deeply inspired and unique banjoist; it was the sound of Greenlaw, as opposed to the sound of a banjo, that made Greenlaw’s presence crucial.

The record was mixed by Brashear, Barger, and Oldham at Brashear’s parents house in east Louisville.

There were fifteen songs considered for the recording. A cover of the Rolling Stones “Hand of Fate” was dropped at the last minute. The full-length record ended up with twelve songs. The outtakes were “Don’t I Look Good Today”, which came out on a double 7” comp called LOUISVILLE SLUGGERS 3, released on Mike Bacayu’s Self Destruct label; and “Valentine’s Day”, which came out eventually on the Palace Music comp LOST BLUES AND OTHER SONGS. The rest of the songs were new originals Oldham began during the previous summer in Bloomington, except “Riding”, which was begun a year or two earlier, and a cover of Washington Phillips’ “I Had a Good Mother and Father”

Auspiciously, David Berman and Bob Nastanovitch of the Silver Jews passed through Louisville and stopped by the session at Driesler’s house. It had been the Silver Jews 7” Ep that had inspired Oldham to send out the first Palace Brothers recordings.

Greenlaw painted and/or the covers for THERE IS NO-ONE WHAT WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU. Oldham had asked him to render the fable of the mouse and the lion and requested that Greenlaw use bright pink and yellow. Greenlaw worked on the cover intensely, ultimately coming up with four powerful variations. Ultimately, all four were utilized, each for a different format or pressing. The back cover is a black and white photograph of a road in northern Scotland taken by Oldham during a hitch-hiking trip.

The record was licensed, via a connection made by Nastanovitch, to the British label Big Cat. The relationship with Big Cat lasted only for the one release, after which all Palace and Bonnie Prince Billy records were licensed through Domino.

It was 1993 and the musical ideas were flowing. Oldham wrote two songs for a 7”, “Trudy Dies” and “Come In”. There was a live-to-DAT session done in Louisville and/or Chicago that was deemed unsuccessful. Meanwhile, Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema of Royal Trux were establishing themselves as freelance record producers under the noms-de-guerre Adam & Eve, and it was decided that they should guide the recording of these two songs. The studio was King Size, in Chicago, run by Dave Trumfio. Mike Fellows tracked the drums but Hagerty erased those drum tracks and replayed the kit himself. Liam Hayes played the Mellotron. Adam & Eve expressed a desire to bring out the inner Springsteen in Oldham’s songs. The front cover of the record sleeve featured a drawing by Jeff Mueller of a bird embryo. The back cover held a photograph by Oldham of land outside of Madison, Virginia. Lyrics to “Trudy Dies” were included on an insert with drawings by Dianne Bellino. There was a video made for “Come In” featuring animation by Bellino and 16mm footage of music rehearsals in the basement of David Pajo’s parents’ house.

It was a silver age of 7” singles in the early 1990’s. The third single attributed to a Palace conglomerate was the equine-themed “Horses”/”Stable Will”. “Horses” was recorded by Steve Good, who has recorded live underground shows in Louisville for decades. The session took place primarily at a house shared by Bob Nastanovitch, Will Oldham, and Britt Walford. Photographs from the session show Brian McMahan playing the drums, Walford playing bass, and Todd Brashear playing the lap steel guitar. Oldham sang and played a rhythm guitar. Oldham asked David Pajo, who was away from town when the session went down, to overdub an electric guitar part including a ripping solo for the end of the song. Pajo recorded the solo once and then called Oldham a day later saying that he hadn’t quite understood what was being asked of him the first time; he’d like to try it again. The songwriting is credited to Timms/Langford. Oldham heard it on Sally Timms’ solo record SOMEBODY’S ROCKING MY DREAMBOAT and had been performing it for a few years. Jon Langford has subsequently said that Brendan Croker contributed significantly to the composition.

Hardly a “B-side”, “Stable Will” has a full life of its own. The song was written mostly by Bryan Rich (under the pseudonym ‘Roy Black’). The ensemble realizing the song was made up of the Pale Horse Riders with Will Oldham singing lead and playing an electric guitar. The Pale Horse Riders were a wild and awesome noise group made up of Chris Layton, Bob Nastanovitch, Paul Oldham, and Pete Townsend. The recording took place in the abandoned old Galt House building in downtown Louisville. Engineer Eric Stoess had access to the building, which was supposedly haunted by a nun. Layton smudged the room with sage smoke prior to the recording to keep evil spirits away and warned the others to “just keep playing” if the nun appeared during the session. The musicians shot bottle-rockets at prostitutes on the street below, which was unfair and hardly laudable.

Towards the end of 1993, Will Oldham found himself in Moscow, staying in the small apartment of Bryan Rich. Rich was there exploring television reporting and production opportunities. Oldham and Rich worked out a couple of songs while Oldham was there, and Rich sold Oldham his Marantz stereo cassette recorder for a couple hundred dollars. Once back in the USA, Oldham continued to work on the set of songs that would be recorded for the second full-length under a Palace name. Grant Barger had moved to Chicago, and Oldham booked time with Barger to begin recording. However, things didn’t cohere as they might have (some results ended up on the DRAG CITY HOUR release a few years later), and Oldham retreated to Louisville in frustration. Todd Brashear had moved to Nashville and was working at a mastering studio. Oldham began to conceive of the record as an unadorned collection, and furiously rehearsed the songs in hopes of making them fit and function together. He used the Marantz that he’d bought from Rich (along with the microphone Rich had thrown into the deal) and began recording the record at his folks’ house. The performances were mostly solo, with the exception of “I Send My Love to You” and “Pushkin”, which featured Paul Oldham on second guitar. Oldham hauled the Marantz with him when he travelled to Birmingham, Alabama to visit brother Ned Oldham. There he recorded “No More Workhorse Blues” during a thunderstorm, and “Come a Little Dog”. On the latter song, overdubbing was made possible (percussion, barking, Jennie Oldham’s flute) by playing the cassette of the original tracking on the Oldham’s home stereo while recording the new parts onto the Marantz. The record was mastered by John Kampschaefer in Louisville; Dianne Bellino contributed a drawing to the artwork, and the front cover is a photo taken in an Irish pub a few years earlier (on the same trip that yielded the back cover photo from THERE IS NO-ONE WHAT WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU). Oldham was inspired by the economy exhibited in the artwork for the then-current Royal Trux record, CATS AND DOGS. Drag City pays artists based on profit-split (no advances), thus it made sense to deliver inexpensive package concepts if one was to hope to make a living from one’s music. When the record was released, it had no title. After a few months, a title occurred to Oldham, DAYS IN THE WAKE, and it was applied to subsequent pressings. The record was licensed to Domino for Europe, beginning a relationship between Oldham and Domino that continues to this day.

DAYS IN THE WAKE was made with somewhat of an urgent desperation, and feelings of fear and loss are abundant in the result. Will Oldham then felt compelled to oppose such darkness with an expression of gratitude for what he was being allowed to do and make. He asked Rian Murphy to oversee production of a four-song session at Acme studios in Chicago with Liam Hayes featured prominently on piano and organ. Four songs were recorded; two of Oldham’s, one Leonard Cohen song (“Winter Lady”) and one song written by Bryan Rich (again under the name Roy Black) and Steve Baker (“Christmastime in the Mountains”). Technologies were changing, and all of the songs were mixed from 2” tape down to ¼” tape and DAT. The formats have inherently different qualities and in the end, the ¼” mixes of the two Oldham songs were used, while the DAT mixes of the two covers were used. Oldham wrote two more songs to be recorded in London. Domino arranged for a session at the Stone Room with Sean O’Hagan playing piano. Oldham had hoped that Heather Frith, a singer from Bermuda, would be able to sing on the sessions. She was not available, so Domino introduced Oldham to Brianna Corrigan, formerly of the Beautiful South. Corrigan joined the session, along with drummer Rob Allum. Oldham was particularly thrilled to be working in the Stone Room, since the Mekons’ CURSE OF THE MEKONS had been recorded there. “All Gone, All Gone” and “Werner’s Last Blues to Blokbuster”, both written in Jamestown, RI, were recorded at this session and completed what was then to be the HOPE EP. Konrad Strauss mastered the record. The front cover featured a photograph by Nicole Vitello of boats docked in Essaouira rendered in the vibrant colors of modern color-copying machines. The back cover was dominated by a photo of Liam Hayes’ magical hands. There was also a photo of Oldham with Dianne Bellino taken by Steve Gullick.

The “Palace Brothers” were invited to open the 2nd stage of the Lollapalooza tour for a couple of weeks in the summer of 1994. At the end of that run a recording session was booked at producer Kramer’s home studio in New Jersey. The band was Will Oldham, Aram Stith (guitar), Jason Stith (bass) and Jack Carneal (drums) and Ned Oldham (guitar). The Trux had done their “Back to School” 7” with Kramer, and it excited Will to think of going in and seeing how the notorious producer twiddled his knobs. The two songs were “West Palm Beach” and “Gulf Shores”. The band had not heard the songs prior to the session. Will had written the songs in the weeks leading up to the summer road stretch.

Will Oldham moved to Birmingham, Alabama to live near brother Ned and family. Birmingham was quiet and inexpensive and a few degrees warmer than Louisville in general. Will wanted to make a record in Birmingham and looked around (the phone book) for a recording studio. He came upon Bates Brothers Recording in nearby Hueytown and decided to do a test session with Ned and drummer Charlie Snell. They recorded “O How I Enjoy the Light” and “Marriage”. Eric Bates was the engineer. The Bates’ studio was well-stocked with keyboards: piano, mellotron, Hammond b-3. The sounds were tight and dry, reminding Oldham of tones obtained in 1970’s Serge Gainsbourg recordings. The photographs on the cover of the single were taken by Bryan Rich. Rich claimed that the back cover photograph was of the ruins of Mikhail Bulgakov’s house. This record was the first under the Palace Records imprint; Oldham had begun to be able to afford to pay for recording sessions, lessening the pressure that comes with spending other people’s money.

The test session at Bates Brothers had been a success. Will Oldham felt comfortable inviting Steve Albini to Alabama to make a full-length record (what would become VIVA LAST BLUES). The Bates’ ample supply of beautifully-maintained keyboards made inviting Liam Hayes to the session a no-brainer. Oldham spoke with Britt Walford about playing drums but eventually Walford formally balked. Instead, Will was encouraged by brother Paul Oldham to ask Jason Loewenstein to come drum. Loewenstein (of Sparkalepsy and Sebadoh) was living in Louisville at the time. Ned Oldham played the bass. Bryan Rich played “lead guitar”; questions still get asked about where said guitar was leading. Oldham has said that Stevie Wonder’s MUSIC OF MY MIND and Cat Stevens’ CATCH BULL AT FOUR were sonic influences, though such influence is hardly notable in the final product. Albini did some significant maintenance work on the 2” tape machines at the Bates studio in order to get things properly up and running. The record was titled VIVA LAST BLUES, in patial tribute to the movies of Russ Meyer. The “last” aspect had to do with Oldham feeling like he was coming to the end of a certain trajectory of discovery. The cover featured a drawing of a cheetah by Dianne Bellino. The LP came with a poster featuring a painting by Cynthia Kirkwood; the CD featured a different Kirkwood painting in the booklet’s center spread. A video was made by Aaron Woolf for the song “Old Jerusalem”; actress Chloe Sevigny starred in the video.

Around this time, folks (Pavement, King Kong) were going to Easley Studios in Memphis to make their records. Oldham didn’t like the inherent sounds of these records but figured he would take a first-hand look at Easley by recording two songs there. These two songs were “(End of) Traveling” and “Lost Blues”. Oldham asked brother Paul along with Jason Hayden (presently of One Beat Off) and Pete Townsend (not of the Who) to come to Memphis for the session. These were ¾ (at the time) of the great Louisville band Speed-to-Roam. Memphis’ Tiffany White sang “Lost Blues” with Will as a full duet partner, the first of many. Studio owner/engineer Doug Easley played the pedal steel guitar. It was decided that “The Mountain” from VIVA LAST BLUES would be released as a single with “(End of) Traveling” as a b-side. Two mixes were run of “(End of) Traveling”. The mix with a “dry” pedal steel was included on the 7” record. The cover of the “Mountain Low” single was a photo that Oldham had taken in Glen Lyon, Scotland, in the shadow of Ben Lawers. “Lost Blues” was later released on the Palace Music compilation LOST BLUES AND OTHER SONGS.

As with the 7” comp AN ARROW THROUGH THE BITCH the previous year (and the Royal TruxDOGS OF LOVE EP), it was decided to compile the “Mountain” 7” and the “West Palm Beach” 7” onto one four-song EP for release overseas on Domino. The mix of “(End of) Traveling” used on this EP had a “wet” pedal steel. The cover art was made by Nolen Otts. Otts intended the art to resemble classic Cuban cigar box art.

Oldham’s Palace Records came into being in 1995. The twin intentions at the time for Palace Records were to formalize the new model of self-funding recording sessions and artwork commissions and to release great musics that Oldham was hearing that he figured might be a hard sell to the folks at Drag City. Three 7”s were released in 1995 on Palace Records that were non-Palace/Will Oldham endeavors. The first was by E/Or, a Louisville group made up of Steve Good (clarinet), Norman Minogue (drums), George Wethington (short wave radio), and Martin Williams (guitar). The two songs are epic abstracts, “Mike” and “Martin Found a Jealous Cop...”, each stretching the limits of the physical format to its outer boundaries.

The other two Palace Records non-Will-Oldham singles released in 1995 were both by the Broadcast Choir. From the ashes of the Pale Horse Riders came this experimental trio made up of Paul Oldham, Peter Townsend and Chris Layton. The records were “The Chapel Song”/“Down the Liver” and “Lights Out”/“Deflective War”. Both singles are harrowing, awesome complements to any playlist.

“So long as he lives, Stephen Malkmus may never run out of hooks”Pitchfork

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks’ new album Sparkle Hard will be released on May 18th via Domino Records.

In February, the band shared its twangy single ‘Middle America,’ the first new music to surface from the group since 2014. As a follow up, the band today shares another taste of the new album with the song, ‘Shiggy,’ an insanely gleeful, old-school four-chord stomper.

Modesty and plain good manners might prevent them from saying so themselves, but the fact that Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks have thrived, rather than simply endured over 17 years and delivered six albums of buzzy, sub-cultural significance, constitutes an impressive legacy. The challenge with album number seven is one that any successful band with integrity faces: how to safeguard that legacy and hold on to their identity without rehashing old ground (unthinkable), and also say something meaningful while (crucially) having fun doing it?

Meeting that issue head on in the run up to The Jicks’ seventh record involved some “navel gazing”, according to singer, songwriter, and guitarist Malkmus and not only in terms of what it means to be releasing music in 2018. If, like him, you’re a voracious consumer of all kinds of culture and feel the need to interact with it, rather than just react, then inevitably “there’s a world that prompts you to put your best foot forward”. With Sparkle Hard Malkmus, Mike Clark (keyboards), Joanna Bolme (bass) and Jake Morris (drums) do exactly that. And they hit the ground running – on air treads.

It’s light ’n’ breezy, head-down heavy, audacious, melancholic and reflective, goodtime and bodacious, and it pulls off the smartest trick: it’s both unmistakeably The Jicks and – due to the streamlining of their trademark tics and turns, plus the introduction of some unexpected flourishes (Auto-Tune, a fiddle, guest vocalist Kim Gordon, one seven-minute song with an acoustic folk intro) – The Jicks refashioned. If 2014’s Wig Out At Jag Bags balanced the lengthy prog workouts of Pig Lib with Mirror Traffic’s sparky pop moments, then Sparkle Hard bears less obvious direct relation to what’s come before. It also has turbocharged energy and enthusiasm by the truckload.

Malkmus started writing Sparkle Hard in 2015. He’d upgraded his home-recording equipment and bought some electronic drums and had been working on the Netflix series Flaked (he penned the incidental music and the end theme song). Demos were done in one day in April of 2017 and then in May, The Jicks started recording at a new studio in Portland called Halfling, which is managed by multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk of The Decemberists, who produced the album.

Self-indulgent escapism has never been The Jicks’ bag, but on Sparkle Hard, the reality of modern life sits closer to the surface, communication cutting to the chase whether it’s a proto-punk grind or a back-porch country duet doing the talking. A cleaner burn for dark and complex times.

Tracklisting:

Cast Off

Future Suite

Solid Silk

Bike Lane

Middle America

Rattler

Shiggy

Kite

Brethren

Refute

Difficulties / Let Them Eat Vowels

Sparkle Hard is available to pre-order on LP (heavyweight vinyl with insert), indie-exclusive deluxe LP (heavyweight coloured vinyl with insert), Dom Mart-exclusive deluxe LP (heavyweight coloured vinyl, insert and 12x12” sticker sheet with 12 individual die cut designs for each of the songs on the album by the creative genius Turbo Island), CD and digital.

20/03/18

Domino Recording Co. is seeking an organized and motivated individual for a Digital Accounts Coordinator position based in the Brooklyn, NY office.

SUMMARY:

The Digital Accounts Coordinator will report into the Head of Global Digital Accounts acting as a pivotal role internally, centralizing internal reporting, administration and serving as a voice of outward communication around Domino’s ongoing priorities. The ideal candidate will be adept at interpreting data, analyzing results using statistical techniques. The role will also support the UK-based Senior Manager of Digital Accounts across the core activities detailed below.

CORE ACTIVITIES:

Generate analytics and reporting including global and territory-specific sales and streaming reports, analysis of new releases and catalog trends.

Assist with weekly account pitch process globally, centralizing outward communication from Domino to all digital accounts and international partners.

Since they appeared with their self-titled, self-released EP back in 2016, Washington, DC trio Flasher has exuded both clarity of intent and radiant self-confidence. Critically applauded from the start, that initial release offered a clear blueprint. By turns razor sharp and woozy, skipping from shoegaze to punk and back again, it offered confirmation of a band whose wiry energy and melodic ease made them instantly arresting.

Today, Flasherannounce their signing to Domino. They've also shared a new video and song, the exhilarating ‘Skim Milk’. The band describes the song and video below:

“The themes in ‘Skim Milk’ and its video might be described as being haunted by your own desire for belonging. We’re not bemoaning “no future, no fate”, we’re advocating for it. From getting a mortgage, to going to college, to crafting public policy, folks are always telling you to think of your future, to make choices in the name of some future. But most folks don’t have the privilege to live outside the present. This kind of future tense, aspirational bullshit means being held hostage by a future that’s already abandoned you. We’d rather escape to something new and unknown than hold out for a good life that hates us and expects us to make lemonade out of miserableness. Instead of holding out and hanging on, we're here to tell you (and ourselves) - “go.””

Domino is very proud to mark the return of Jon Hopkins and his new album, Singularity, his first since 2013’s breakthrough, Immunity. Singularity is due for release on 4th May 2018. Along with news of Singularity, Hopkins has shared ‘Emerald Rush’ the first track to be released from the album. Listen to the track and watch the animated video, directed by Robert Hunter & Elliot Dear HERE.

In addition to news of Singularity, Hopkins has announced a run of live dates across the UK & Europe with US dates to be announced shortly. He will also be making a number of festival appearances in 2018.

Singularity begins and ends on the same note: a universe beginning, expanding, and contracting towards the same infinitesimal point. Where Immunity – his hypnotic breakthrough LP – charted the dark alternative reality of an epic night out, Singularity explores the dissonance between dystopian urbanity and the green forest. It is a journey that returns to where it began – from the opening note of foreboding to the final sound of acceptance.

Shaped by his experiences with meditation and trance states, the album flows seamlessly from rugged techno to transcendent choral music, from solo acoustic piano to psychedelic ambient. Its epic musical palette is visceral and emotionally honest: with a destructive opener full of industrial electronics and sonic claustrophobia and a redemptive, pure end on solo piano.

Exploring the connectivity of the mind, sonics and the natural world, Singularity reflects the different psychological states Hopkins experienced while writing and recording. It is a transformative trip of defiance from his initial sense of frustration at the state of the contemporary world to the ultimate conclusion that a true sense of peace and belonging can only come from nature.

Singularity is intended to be listened to in one sitting, as a complete body of work.

For their latest attack, the Domino artists The Kills re-wired the circuits of Saul Williams’ “List of Demands (Reparations)” to create a wounded, volcanic, and urgent anthem. An opaque but powerful litany that could incite the most apathetic to action, a wake-up call capable of being interpreted as personal or political. The song comes backed with a dazzling cover of Peter Tosh’s “Steppin’ Razor”. Artwork for the single was created especially for the release by Shepard Fairey.

The greatest duos teeter on the cliff’s edge between chaos and equilibrium, salvation and obliteration, 10,000-watt voltage and gothic darkness. For a decade and a half, The Kills have mastered that savage balance, unleashing artful detonation and subtle vocal and guitar violence. That’s five albums and four EPs where Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince reimagined the possibilities of modern duality—alchemizing garage rock, punk, and blues into smoke clouds, psychic carnage, and a smoldering nocturnal slink. A northwest passage between Outkast and Suicide.

“It’s a song of strength and empowerment, rooted in the idea of rising above,” Mosshart says. “It was one of those songs you’re almost scared to cover, because it carries so much respect. It wasn’t a straight up love song or a drug song. It was defined, serious, and perfect already. With certain songs, you feel like an intruder trying to sing them, but this one felt like my own.”

You can only cover a classic by successfully re-inventing it from the foundation up. In this instance, Mosshart and Hince slowed down Williams’ blistering post-punk and quasi-rap testament to political courage, to something resembling slightly sped-up dub—full of booming drums, gorgeous negative space, and Mosshart’s concealed dagger yawp.

The Williams original carried a special resonance after becoming one of the backstage jams regularly played before Kills’ shows. The banger you play to hype yourself prior to getting on-stage and trying to conquer the world. Williams’ lyrics brilliantly double as self-motivational propulsion and a poetic indictment of various iniquities. It’s somehow vague enough to allow for any application, but it’s as personal as blood dripping on a ransom note.

Decamping to the legendary Sunset Sound in Hollywood with producer Chris Coady, The Kills recorded both songs in three days. Until they entered the studio, they’d never sat down and played either. It took myriad approaches at varying tempos—searching for the right groove they found it. Only when they slowed it down to double time did the new haunting melody emerge.

“List of Demands” was so impactful to us—it was the kind of song that would come on backstage and everyone would stop what they were doing and stand up, “ Hince says. “The more I found myself listening to the lyrics, the more I heard in them, and found myself singing along with goose bumps. The brilliant thing about it is that it speaks to so many different ideas—a true underground thing like the best Iggy Pop songs.”

Saul Williams returned the compliment, waxing rhapsodically about The Kills’ tribute. “I always felt envious of the way the 60's generation shared songs and ideologies. Jimi singing Dylan. Rotary Connection singing Otis Redding. The Stones singing the blues,” Williams said. “This is all part of the beauty and power of music and it reverberates deeply in me. All this to say, I'm honored. I liked The Kills before they chose to cover ‘LOD.’ If they can feel themselves in that song, it's because they are as much a part of it as I am.”

It’s an affirmation of the profound meaning that a song can inhabit, particularly in times of turmoil and duress. The Kills channeled those past nexuses, creating a new form from biblical material, another attack on complacency, a tribute to the joys of flux, a transmission that carries on the unwavering belief that some things must change.

Artist Shepard Fairey, whose striking image was created for the single’s sleeve art, says, “I've been a fan of The Kills for years, and I initially loved them because I can't say no to great garage rock with attitude, grit, and a vocalist in Alison Mosshart with a ridiculous amount of heart and soul. In recent years though, they've turned into even more than that. They’re now great songwriters who have stayed true to their roots but also expanded their musical palette. When Alison and Jamie approached me about doing the art for the song “List of Demands” and shared their version of the song, I was excited both because I love their version of the song, and I think it's a song that makes sense for the state of things in the world right now. We need music that speaks to the struggles of the average person in the face of oppressive powers. The art I created was meant to reflect the sentiment of the song and the idea that people have power in numbers and are looking back at those in power with their hands up, making their demands. The do-it-yourself spirit of punk rock and activist propaganda influenced the art and design."

The Kills have announced upcoming US shows, with all going on sale tomorrow. Saul Williams will join The Kills for the LA show in August, and as their very special guest will play a full set prior to The Kills taking the stage. The band will be returning to London, supporting Foo Fighters at the Olympic Stadium on Saturday the 23rd of June. See below for worldwide dates. Get your tickets from: http://thekills.tv/

The Kills’ last release was their much-lauded June 2016 album Ash & Ice, which spawned the singles “Doing It To Death” and “Heart Of A Dog”. The band toured the album for 18 months performing at multiple festivals, including Coachella and David Lynch’s Festival of Disruption, and performed on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Late Late Show with James Corden and Conan. They appeared in the recent Nashville episode of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown on CNN, in which Alison toured Nashville with Bourdain before the band played a song live for a scene in the show.

Beautiful Thing, the forthcoming solo album from Alexis Taylor will be released on April 20th via Domino. It is a very new, very individualist and – yes – very beautiful reflection of a life that's changed immeasurably since Alexis first started out in music. This is a musician, writer and singer who has carved his own unique path through the music of the 21st century, completely avoiding getting trapped along the way in dumb oppositions of pop vs avant-garde, dancefloor vs intellect, retro vs modernist and so on. He has worked with living legends from major pop stars to free improvisors in the furthest left field, played huge arenas and tiny clubs without ever privileging one over the other, and through all of it, never stopped listening and learning. All of this accumulated experience is put to work on Beautiful Thing in pursuit of something subtle and elusive but ultimately quite profound and beautifully human.

Taylor’s fourth album also represents the first time Alexis has made a solo album with a producer, that producer being Tim Goldsworthy, co-founder of Mo Wax and DFA Recordings and member of UNKLE.

Today, Alexis is pleased to share the video for the album’s title track and the track that kick-started the recording process with Goldsworthy. With ‘Beautiful Thing’, Alexis combines experimental, clattering noises with crazed, disco lavishness and bug-eyed acid house momentum to create something giddy and glorious. The video, directed by Edwin Burdis, is a suitably compelling counterpart.

Theupcoming record is a bold and confident step forward for Alexis both sonically and in terms of his songwriting abilities. It has electronic thrills, dark spaces, memories of dancefloors, heartfelt writing; it's composed, it's improvised, it's accidental, it's strange, but it's also very immediate. It is a beautiful thing itself: a moving, modern and unique sounding long-player, to get lost in on repeated deep listens.

Additionally, Alexis has announced a run of tour dates in UK and Europe including London’s Omeara, where he will be playing accompanied by Susumu Mukai (aka Zongamin) on bass and Leo Taylor (The Invisible, Hot Chip) on drums.

On ‘Middle America’, Malkmus’s wry wordplay and sunny twang create an ode to underdogs everywhere, with bittersweet words of encouragement for the ramshackle character on their receiving end. Only SM & the Jicks can craft this kind of brightly low-key anthem, a perfect three-minute-thirty-second country-speckled gem about life’s questions big (the inevitable passage of time; aging) and small (getting shitfaced; blushing the color of Robitussin).

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks will tour North America in the summer, hitting major markets including Chicago, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Nashville, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. Fans can likely expect a further taste of new music, on top of the band’s beloved catalogue. Full tour dates below.

In 2010, following the success of the Von Südenfed record, it was agreed that Domino would release the next album by The Fall. I was charged with writing the biography for the release and was given a number to ring in order to speak with Mark E. Smith. Elena Poulou answered the phone and in the background I could hear a raucous noise I assumed to be the band rehearsing. Although this was unlikely as I was calling Mark and Elena at their home.

'Sorry,' Elena said as the noise increased in volume and now included laughter and animated shouting 'could you call tomorrow same time, it's not convenient'.

When I telephoned the next day Elena answered once again, apologised for the day before as Mark came briskly to the phone.

'Alright, yeah' he said 'we're going to get this record out. What’s taking so long?' Mark E Smith then chuckled and for the next ten minutes he spoke with the combination of politeness, indignation and occasional contrariness on which his reputation rested.

I asked him about the new album's opening track 'Bury Parts 1 & 3', 'I fucking hate the place' he said, as well as the album's closing number 'Weather Report 2' a song that shared an emotional tenderness and tone with 'Bill Is Dead' from the 1992 album Extricate.

'Well,’ he continued 'I really like the band at the moment and think it’s the best we've sounded. I mean I would say that but I mean it.'

The defining characteristic of 'Weather Report 2' and 'Bill Is Dead' is the rarely heard vulnerability in Smith's voice and a lyric in which he talks openly and dramatically about his life. There was a pause that indicated this brief moment of sentimentality was sufficient and that our conversation had now ended.

Your Future Our Clutter was well received and continued the momentum The Fall had regained at the turn of the century, when a run of strong releases, the renewed interest in Post Punk and their discovery by a new generation led to one of their most energetic and popular periods.

No one would ever doubt Smith's work ethic but by the late 1990s his well-documented behavioural problems, together with the sense of The Fall operating on a treadmill of contractual obligations and cash in hand reissues had curdled his doggedness. Some of the records from this period such as Levitate and The Marshall Suite are eerie in a way few other Fall records are eerie. On them Smith sounds under resourced, both financially and emotionally, to resist his investiture as an Indie National Treasure. A situation he clearly finds intolerable. The productivity rate of the prole art threat had by now threatened the band’s future. At the concert I attended at Dingwalls in '98 the band played as a trio of Smith, Julia Nagle and a drummer, Kate Themen. For ten minutes towards the end the choreographer Michael Clarke joined them on bass. Many present found the performance riveting, but I suspect most assumed they had witnessed the band's final London concert.

Parts of their subsequent survival lie in the regard and mystique with which The Fall were held outside the UK. In the record shop I worked in almost twenty-five years ago, I came close to convincing a young Will Oldham to part with a portion of his fee from the previous night's concert for a mint copy of Fall In A Hole. On a visit to the Domino office Bill Callahan once enquired about the merits of 1997's Levitate, a record very few people I knew had bothered listening to. And despite his regular criticism of the band, Pavement covered The Classical from Hex Enduction Hour for a Peel Session that year. Its inclusion moved the DJ to send the band a personal note of thanks.

It's not difficult to imagine how exotic the early Fall must have seemed to young people in America with enquiring minds. On the 1981 live album A Part Of America Therein, the band are introduced as being from the 'From the riot torn streets of Manchester, England'. The Fall's music of that era is as evocative of Britain in the early 1980s as any World In Action documentary. The lyrics to 'Winter' feature a 'cleaning lady', 'alcoholics dry out house', and a 'feminist Austin maxi with anti nuclear sticker'. The accompanying music is played by a band with a listlessness that, like much of the country at the time, is almost pathological.

The performance the band gave on the Peel session version of 'Winter' is particularly dramatic. On many of these recordings Smith's voice is often louder in the mix and the BBC studio arrangements clearly suited the band. Perhaps Smith was also aware how symbiotic the relationship between The Fall, the radio session and the DJ had become. These were sessions listened to by people who resisted the idea of Smith as an avuncular curmudgeon. They saw him more as an avant-garde Johnny Cash: a man in a black leather jacket and the same neat haircut who was incapable of stopping and whose eyes had become ingrained with crow's feet at an early age. Someone who lived by their wits and was well aware they were sharper and more resilient than those of his contemporaries.

Three years ago I invited Smith to do a Q&A at the stage at Green Man Festival I was then curating. He and the band arrived backstage in their usual manner, in a vehicle branded in the livery of Salford Van Hire. For two hours they sat in the sunshine decompressing from the journey down, laughing and drinking but not to excess, merely enjoying the moment.

When it was time for Smith to take the stage I led him to the side entrance. His right arm shot out with an involuntarily spasm.

'Fucking hell' he whispered 'I didn't know it was this big, can you get us a beer?' I duly passed him a can that he downed in one, before strutted on to the stage with a theatrical sniff and his usual swagger. He received an ovation from the nine hundred people gathered there to see him and for a brief moment a smile cracked across his face. The interview was sponsored by the music magazine Mojo and consisted of questions sent in from its readers. For the next 50 minutes he held forth on matters that provoked his ire: music magazines, Mojo in particular, festivals, Stewart Lee and matters he found inspiring, including Ultramagnetic MCs and Methodism.

Superorganism, one of 2018’s most hotly tipped new artists, today announce full details of their highly anticipated debut album. The eight piece band - a sprawling, multi-limbed collection of international musicians and pop culture junkies who have been shortlisted in the BBC Sound Of and VEVO dscvr polls among others – willrelease their self-titled debut on 2nd March via Domino.

Self-produced, written and recorded in the east London house-stroke-studio-stroke band HQ they all share together (imagine a squat version of the Brill Building, or a lo-fi, DIY take on Max Martin’s Cheiron studio), Superorganism is a spectacularly confident debut record that beams with a sense of wonky fun, a kaleidoscopic riot of sound and visuals. Influenced by the world-building depth of artists like Devo, Beck and The Avalanches, Superoganism soundtrack’s the band’s rapid trajectory from shared house side project to global audiovisual powerhouse and features previous singles ‘Something For Your M.I.N.D.’ and ‘It’s All Good / Nobody Cares’ as well as their brand single ‘Everybody Wants To Be Famous’.

Revealed today for the very first time, ‘Everybody Wants To Be Famous’ is accompanied by a stunning video from Superorganism’s very own Robert Strange and can be watched right now below.

Meanwhile, Superorganism will be taking their acclaimed live show on the road throughout 2018, including extensive UK, European and north American headline tours. The full dates are below, including a London headline show at the 1000 capacity Oval Space on 8th March, with further information available from http://www.wearesuperorganism.com/#tour

07/12/17

When Wild Beasts announced that they would be calling it a day, the news came with an unusual absence of drama. There were no bust-ups or breakdowns to report, no warring words, not even a trace of the trademark “creative differences”. Instead there was a dignified and heartfelt message to their fans that explained that the band had run its course.

For those who’d watched the Cumbrian group grow from purveyors of peculiar guitar pop into one of the most inventive and important bands of their generation, the news came as a shock. Weren’t they just hitting the peak of their powers? Perhaps that was the point.

“I think there's a life cycle with any band,” says Hayden Thorpe. “It reaches a point where the snake begins to eat its tail. Our last album, ‘Boy King’, felt just like our first record in many ways – in its fuck you spirit, in its sense of self-destruction.”

Wild Beasts will play their final ever shows in February next year, and we bid the band a bittersweet farewell with Last Night All My Dreams Came True– a live studio album to be released on February 16th via Domino Documents.

Last Night All My Dreams Came True is a career-spanning collection and features songs from each of Wild Beasts’ studio albums with an emphasis on Boy King, their most direct record yet. Looking back on Wild Beasts’ back catalogue and the themes they tackled, there is a sense of prescience – toxic masculinity, gender fluidity, the conflicts surrounding class, politics and art were no bandwagon jumps, often becoming hot topics in the media several years after they’d been eloquently dealt with on record.

Today, we are pleased to share ‘The Devil’s Palace’, a rarely-played track that blends ‘The Devil’s Crayon’, from the quartet’s debut Limbo, Panto, and ‘Palace’, from 2014’s Present Tense. An exclusive for the record, it showcases the vocal interplay between Thorpe’s falsetto and Tom Fleming’s baritone perfectly.

Recorded in two days over the summer at RAK Studios, Last Night All My Dreams Came True is the second official Domino Documents release and has more than fulfilled the Domino Documents aim to capture a band at the height of their powers, recording a selection of their finest songs.

“It’s us as tight and slick as we ever have been,” adds Tom. “And it’s also us giving the fewest fucks we've ever given. There’s a sense of celebration and destructiveness combined, a sense that the fetters are off. Not that they were ever on ... but that sense of limited time before you shuffle off is very much a motivator.”

And make no mistake; this is the last time Wild Beasts will be doing such things. This is no hiatus and there are no crafty eyes on a future reunion. “We get to leave our desk by our own accord,” concludes Hayden, “and that makes us very lucky. Whoever gets to do that?”

24/11/17

Domino seeks a Product Manager to join its London team.

Product Managers at Domino are in charge of running artist campaigns inside the company.

The successful candidate will have significant experience in working closely with recording artists and their managers while a proven track record in devising and delivering creative and notable marketing campaigns is essential

The candidate should have a solid general knowledge of the music industry, the marketplace, the digital space and how this informs all aspects of marketing.

The role also includes being responsible for the creation of all campaign content - so the candidate will need to be confident in commissioning high quality music videos, remixes, artwork and all types of digital content / marketing assets.

Responsibilities include:

• Devising and implementing quality and highly creative marketing campaigns alongside the rest of the team, for a designated roster of artists.

• Delivering the campaign to the rest of the Domino global team.

• Formatting and origination of physical and digital releases and liaising with our distributer on all aspects of driving retail sales and retail marketing initiatives.

• Responsible for all content origination and commissioning and delivery of all video, audio and digital content, as well as marketing assets, to meet deadlines and relevant specs, liaison with management/licensors to ensure global co-ordination.

• Responsible for originating the overall timeline for the campaign and making sure the various deliverables are meeting designated deadlines.

• Making sure that all aspects of the campaign are communicated, objectives are set and followed up on by the wider Domino team, and in charge of getting input from the various members of the team on the project, including but not limited to A&R, Marketing/Digital Marketing, Promotions, International, Production, Digital Account Management.

• Managing of given budgets and liaising with the UK GM on budgets for all artists

Minimum 3 years appropriate experience.

Salary dependent on experience.

Please send a covering letter stating how you meet the requirements along with your CV to pmjob@dominorecordco.com before 5pm on Monday 11th December, 2017.

Sorry are a new London band centered around Asha Lorenz and Louis O'Bryen, two 19 year-old childhood best friends. Along with Lincoln Barrett (drums) and Campbell Baum (bass) Sorry have been making a name for themselves on London's underground circuit since 2015.

Although starting life with a conventional rock band set up, Sorry’s tastes are wide-ranging and reflect their age and omnivorous YouTube-era musical upbringing where rock, hip hop, noise, electronic soundscapes, grime and folk all sit side-by-side and without confusion. Accordingly, all these influences and more form the band's unique nascent musical universe - a bold, ambitious and at times irreverent canvas onto which the symbiotic intensity of Lorenz’s and O'Bryen's emotional and hyper-melodic songwriting is projected.

‘Wished’ is their debut studio recording and follows the recent self-release of Home Demo(ns) Vol. 1, an eclectic, homespun 13 track audio/visual mixtape. Recorded by Sean Oakley (Rick Rubin, Frank Ocean) and mixed by Andrew Savours (My Bloody Valentine), it is an enticing first document of the band's effortlessly emotive songwriting and command of atmosphere which will be familiar to anyone who has seen their visceral live shows so far, as well as a glimpse at in-studio production possibilities to be explored in their future work. ‘Wished’ will also be accompanied by a b-side, ‘Lies’ - set to arrive later this month. Both tracks will be packaged together on Sorry’s very first 7” vinyl release on Domino, available to pre-order here.

Sorry will embark on a full U.K. tour supporting South London’s psychedelic soul reinventors Childhood on 16 November - taking in Leeds, Dublin, Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester, Brighton and London - before ending 2017 with their biggest headline show to date at Corsica Studios in London on 5 December. The evening will see the band curate a line up of artists, DJs and visual artists, including Middle England (live), DJ sets from Mica Levi and Glows, and poet Georgie Jesson, plus an exhibition from Flop / Spit Tease.

08/11/17

Domino is very proud to present Microshift, the third album from Hookworms, due for release on February 2nd 2018. With the announcement of Microshift, the band share new track, ‘Negative Space’ – listen HERE.Along with new music, Hookworms will return to the live circuit with dates in both 2017 and in 2018 (a full list of dates and ticket links can be found below).

Microshift is the Leeds band's first new work in over 3 years and marks a seismic shift in their sound, dynamic, songwriting and production, whilst still bearing all the ferocious energy, intricate musicianship and bruised but beautiful song-craft of the previous releases which have quietly made them one of the UK's most revered young bands.

This is the band's third studio album technically but arguably the first in which the studio has been central to its creation. Pearl Mystic and second LP, The Hum were heavily informed by the band's live sound, Microshift on the other hand came to life in the studio, formed out of loops, modular synthesizer sequences, drum machines, homemade samples etc. which were jammed around and layered until the songs began to emerge. The band have also opened their writing to include collaborations with artists such as Richard Formby (on Opener), Christopher Duffin (on Boxing Day) and Alice Merida Richards (on Each Time We Pass).

Radiant, immersive and teeming with light, but still heavy and forceful - the music on Microshift acts as a very deliberate counter to some of the difficult topics the album's lyrics address. Death, disease, heartbreak, body image and even natural disaster are all present here but the overall effect these songs achieve is euphoric catharsis.

The album was written and recorded in full following a complete rebuild of the band’s Suburban Home Studio after the River Aire floods in Leeds in the winter of 2015 which devastated the studio. The band had an incredible response to a GoFundMe campaign and the subsequent help of volunteers over several months to rebuild the studio from nothing is a huge part of the band’s continued existence. Striving through the toughness, it is perhaps no surprise that the record is one of both defiance and darkness. “All of our records are to an extent about mental health,” comments MJ. “Largely this is an album about loss but also about maturing, accepting your flaws and the transience of intimacy”.

25/10/17

‘Always Ascending’ the new album from Franz Ferdinand, is being released by Domino on Friday the 9th of February. Nothing short of a rebirth, the album’s 10 songs are a triumphant recasting of the group, bursting with fresh ideas and vigorous sonic experimentation. You can listen to the first single, also titled ‘Always Ascending’ HERE and download or stream it HERE.

‘Always Ascending’ was recorded at RAK Studios, London and Motorbass in Paris, with the help of French producer extraordinaire Philippe Zdar (Cassius, Phoenix, The Beastie Boys), the mutual affection between band and producer seeping into every dazzling groove. ‘Always Ascending’shows Franz Ferdinand broadening their palate, as exuberant as it is euphoric, creating a sound that singer, Alex Kapranos, refers to as “simultaneously futuristic and naturalistic.”

From the city which jointly played host to the album’s conception, the band will mark the announcement of ‘Always Ascending’ with a live streamed launch event at Paris’s Point Ephémère, to be broadcast from the Franz Ferdinand Facebook page from 8.30pm BST tonight, Wednesday October 25, during which the band will preview a selection of their new recordings.

‘Always Ascending’ is available to pre-order via iTunes and all DSPs now and will be available on CD, vinyl and ltd edition cassette via DomMart, with a special DomMart edition, featuring marbled blue and white vinyl, with a signed print and tote bag.

Tickets for shows in Ireland, UK and Europe will be available to purchase from 9am on Friday the 3rd of November, Japan from the 11th of November and US and Canada from 10am local time October 27th. More information can be found on the band’s website: http://franzferdinand.com

Over the space of three years, two singles and countless gigs, including tour supports with Teenage Fanclub and Real Estate, Glasgow’s Spinning Coin have determinedly, and with single-minded purpose, made their music heard: beautifully rough-hewn guitar pop that takes in frustration, escapism, but also gracefulness and splendour, in equal measure.

The five-piece now announce that their debut album Permo will be released on November 10th via The Pastels’ Domino imprint, Geographic Music and have shared the video for new track ‘Sleepless’.

Recorded with Edwyn Collins at his AED Studios, and at Green Door Studio (the recording centre for the new wave of Glasgow artists) with Stu Evans, Permo is an album of bold steps and simple gestures, coming from a group who have found, seemingly effortlessly, a confident, unpretentious and egalitarian way of working together. Spinning Coin’s two songwriters - Sean Armstrong and Jack Mellin – oscillate taking centre stage on a song; Armstrong’s more melancholic melodies contrasting with Mellin’s urgent refrains.

The fourteen songs on Permo trace all kinds of terrain, though the overarching story might be that of a group looking for escapism, somehow and anyhow, in the midst of a social and cultural climate that’s closing down possibilities for difference and community.

It opens with the gorgeous ‘Raining On Hope Street’, an Armstrong song that was released on 7” earlier this year – there’s an undercurrent to the song, too, as Armstrong reflects that he wanted to write something “slightly spooky, ambiguous and open to interpretation”. ‘Tin’ follows, one of many Mellin songs that looks to the outside world and finds things wanting. “’Tin’ is trying to look at the two extremes of privilege and under-privilege,” he says. It’s a theme that Mellin returns to, with variation, over the course of the album – from the deceptively spry ‘Money Is A Drug’, whose flecks of country-soul charm conceals lyrics calling out ‘class war’ and ‘stupid rules’, through to ‘Powerful’, where Mellin takes on the possibilities of self-empowerment:

Spinning Coin write from lived experience, grounding their songs in an understanding that we’re all finding our way through the world, trying to figure out what the hell is going on out there. Armstrong takes on similar themes with ‘Starry Eyes’, and its blunt lines about how it’s not ‘the right time to celebrate, when people in the world are dying at the hands of the government’, but he also writes some of the album’s more peaceable songs, like the sleepwalking reverie of ’Metronome River’, or the driftwork of ‘Floating With You’.

Elsewhere on Permo, The Pastels’ Katrina Mitchell and Breakfast Muff’sSimone Wilson sing on ‘Be Free’ and ‘Running With The World’ respectively, plus the band have just welcomed new member Rachel Taylor. That’s a typically Spinning Coin development: a group fiercely engaged with community, welcoming new experience into their orbit, and looking for ways to move forwards with a warmth for humanity. It’s writ large across Permo – finding better ways to live, and to be together in the world, against the odds.

Occasionally, along comes a band that perfectly captures so much of what is exciting about music right now. In 2017, mining the golden moments of pop’s past, sights firmly set on the giddy possibilities of music’s future, emitting an infectious sense of wonky fun and producing a kaleidoscopic riot of sound and visuals, that band could well be Superorganism.

Superorganism is a sprawling, multi-limbed collection of international musicians and pop culture junkies. They number eight in total - recruited from London, Japan, Australia and New Zealand - seven of whom now live together in a house-stroke-DIY studio-stroke-band HQ in Homerton, east London.

It was in this house, in early 2017, that the collective had their musical Big Bang! moment. Though they’d previously created music and visuals together, this was something distinctly fresh. They sent the track to their friend Orono, a Japanese student who at that time was studying at high school in Maine, New England. Orono wrote and recorded a vocal part and pressed ‘reply’. What came back across the Atlantic was an intoxicating piece of idiosyncratic, technicolor pop. That track was ‘Something For Your M.I.N.D.’. Superorganism was born.

At that point it’s unlikely any of the members would have expected to hear that song - or Superorganism’s debut AA single ‘It’s All Good’ / ‘Nobody Cares’ - played by Frank Ocean or Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig themselves on their respective radio shows. Or that the band’s identity would be the subject of so much speculation. Or that they would sign a deal with the legendary independent Domino label. Or that there’d be such demand to see Superorganism live that their debut UK show would take place at London’s 700 capacity Village Underground venue. But over the last few months, such is the trajectory of this unique band that that is exactly what has happened.

Today, following a huge amount of online chatter ‘Something For Your M.I.N.D.’ finally gets a full single release. The track will be available on all digital services, as well as a limited-edition, one-sided etched 7” with download card. It is their debut release on Domino.

"SFYM was created purely online. My buddies in London sent me the demo on Facebook, then I wrote the lyrics and recorded the vocals on Garageband via my Macbook microphone in about an hour or two... then it was pretty much done! We just had to add a couple of key missing ingredients to the mix: some sweet backing vocals, a sick artwork, Tucan's magical touch to make the track sound even more dope, and chemical X.

We're more than excited to bring this song to back to life (officially) and to let it, once again, fluoresce on the dark corners of the Internet."

Meanwhile, Superorganism is delighted to announce a run of live dates across the UK, Europe and US. Following a debut live show at Hamburg’s Reeperbahn Festival on 22nd September, they will play their first ever UK show at London’s Village Underground on 5th October. Dates across Europe follow before December sees Superoganism’s debut US shows – at Brooklyn’s House Of Yes on 12th December and Los Angeles’ Moroccan Lounge on 14th December.

27/07/17

Domino seeks radio plugger

Domino is looking for a new radio plugger to join its in house promo team. The successful applicant will work within Domino’s current radio structure and will have an extensive knowledge of all aspects of UK radio. He or she will need established relationships at radio and a proven track record of working successful releases.

The ideal candidate will be articulate, persuasive, knowledgeable, sociable, a frequent gig goer and music lover.

Over the course of their lush, strange album “Althaea”, London duo Trailer Trash Tracys condense a number of disparate styles into music that thrillingly broaches the void between figuration and abstraction. While undeniably beautiful and quite often infectious in parts, this is certainly not pop music by any traditional definition; rather, it appeals to the more intuitive of mind and wild at heart. More than simply becoming a philosophical exercise however, the result is their most ambitious and idiosyncratic body of work to date, one which operates at the very limits of what pop music can be.

Their debut, “Ester”, released in 2012, manifested the band’s approach to making music as a fine balance between chaos and order, laying out a dense and dreamlike ecosystem of Sufi poetry, Solfeggio scales and, floating above it all, Susanne Aztoria’s otherworldly yet emotionally charged vocals. Early singles such as “Strangling Good Guys” and “You Wish You Were Red” proved to be outliers – rather than simply making lo-fi dream pop, the band were instead aiming for something far more subconscious and esoteric.

With “Althaea”, the band continue their investigations into the farther flung reaches of pop music, with stunning results. Spanning 10 deeply esoteric tracks, “Althaea” sees the band drift further afield from traditional song structures to create a new aural lexicon of their own, one as influenced by Filipino carnival music and Latin rhythms as it was by Japanese tropical music from the 80s. Even at their most outwardly pop – the pristine “Eden Machine” for instance, or the swooning “Kalesa”, there is a baroque splendour, and heightened sensuality. The interplay of light and dark, the foreign and the familiar, brings forth an album with manifold pleasures, one which rewards repeated listening and further exploration.

Watch the video for new single “Eden Machine” below aalongside the trailer for the short film of Althaea - as premiered last week at the Whirled Cinema in Brixton.

Bright Phoebus, Lal and Mike Waterson’s 1972 folk-noir masterpiece, has long been recognised as one of British music's legendary lost records. Following the parting of ways of The Watersons and freed from the strictures of folk orthodoxy, Lal and Mike Waterson’s love of words allowed them to serve the needs of their songs in ways that weren’t possible when singing already written songs.

Featuring performances from Lal, Mike and Norma Waterson, Martin Carthy, Richard Thompson, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Tim Hart and Maddy Prior, amongst others, the album is now recognised as a forward-thinking benchmark for the genre. Fans include Arcade Fire, Stephen Malkmus, Billy Bragg, Jarvis Cocker, Richard Hawley – the latter two performed the record themselves in 2013 on the Bright Phoebus Revisited tour.

Domino are pleased to reissue Bright Phoebus – Songs By Lal And Mike Watersonon 4th August, this will be the first time since its release the album will be widely available. Additionally under the supervision of David Suff (Topic/Fledg'ling) and Marry Waterson (daughter of Lal), the album has been remastered from the original tapes.

Alongside the reissue of the original album, there will be a deluxe version containing 12 demos for the album, themselves tinged with their own mythology and previously unreleased. The standard single-disc CD and LP editions replicate the original artwork with lyrics; the deluxe editions of both are double-disc and contain sleeve notes by Pete Paphides.

The origins of Bright Phoebus started in 1971, only a few years after the split of The Watersons whose three albums had a profound effect on the folk world. Following the split, and independently of each other, Mike and Lal had started writing their own songs; after Lal moved back to Hull; they started to cultivate these ideas together.

Not long after, Martin Carthy was visiting for a show, "We did Hull Art School or something, and then the next morning we went round to visit Lal, and she had all these songs. We sat there listening to them and… now, I knew Lal wrote songs but I had never heard any of them prior to this point. It was extraordinary.” Convinced that these songs needed to be heard by the wider world, Martin alerted Steeleye Span bandmate and former Fairport Convention bassist Ashley Hutchings to their existence. “I was instantly in tune with what I heard,” remembered Ashley, “I found an empathy with the songs, and I really would have fought off anyone to play bass on them.”

Ashley got to work; he contacted Bill Leader and set the whole thing up, along with Richard Thompson and Martin Carthy. All Lal and Mike Waterson had to do was allow themselves to be swept along by the collective will of everyone who had either heard or heard about their songs. And when, at the very end of 1971, it emerged that a homesick Norma Waterson would be returning to join them, the heavens looked to be aligning as never before.

Recorded in a week in the basement of Cecil Sharp House, Mike recalled “Lal and I dreamed our way through the recordings. It was magic.” Marry, who was eight at the time, remembered her father George describing the sessions as “a great big party”, people just wandered in. Tim Hart and Maddy Prior are on a few tracks because they happened to walk through the door, so they were lassoed in to do some vocals. One poor sod came in to deliver a package and we said, ‘Right! You’re in! And we stuck some words in front of him and put him in the chorus! He sang away, thank you very much, and then he left!’”

Despite the anticipation for a new ‘Watersons’ record, the release of Bright Phoebus was viewed with suspicion from the conservative folk community and shortly after, Bill Leader’s company went bankrupt and the initial pressing of 2000 LPS soon fell out of print. Since then, the album has become legend, its scarcity not hindering generations of music fans falling for its beguiling atmosphere. Sadly Lal – who passed away from lung cancer in 1998 - never got to see Bright Phoebus receive a full re-evaluation. Mike Waterson did, at least, get to enjoy some of backdated acclaim before his death in 2011. But he remained dogged in his belief that none of that mattered. “You do what you do,” he insisted. “And nothing is right to them, and everything’s right to you. Who are you making the record for? *You.* If fans like your record, then wonderful. If they don’t, well you’ve made it anyway. Because you love the songs.”

The Kills – Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince – will release the Echo Home – Non-Electric EPdigitally on June 2nd, with a limited edition 10” vinyl release available for pre-order today.

Both the physical and digital versions of the Echo Home – Non-Electric EP will feature audio from a stripped down session the band captured recently at Electric Lady Studios in New York. Alongside “Echo Home”, the EP features Ash & Ice track “That Love”, a cover of Rihanna’s “Desperado” (which the band originally played as part of a Sirius XMU session), and the song “Wait”, off the band’s first ever release, Black Rooster EP, which celebrates it’s 15 year anniversary on May 28th.

The Black Rooster EP was originally released on Dim Mak in 2002 and was the start of what’s been an incredible career for Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince of The Kills.

With five full-length albums (the most recent being 2016’s Ash & Ice), four EPs, a documentary, and countless live shows under their belt, the passion and fire they continue to bring to every recording and performance is extraordinary.

In their 15th year as a band, The Kills have been looking back and celebrating with a string of anniversary shows and retrospective features, and now this re-recording of “Wait”, one of the first Kills songs ever released. Steve Aoki, owner of Dim Mak and another artist who has proven a career with similar staying power, recently had some words to share on the release of Black Rooster:

"Many moons ago, back in 2002, I had to make a decision whether to pursue a Ph.D. Program or continue with my label Dim Mak & after hearing a demo from The Kills and becoming the first American label to release their EP Black Rooster, I knew what path I was going to choose. They took me under their wing and I hit the road with them as their tour manager, merch guy, driver (we all took turns) and label. I’ll never forget that and love Jamie and Alison forever. Thank you for believing in lil me when not many people gave two shits about Dim Mak and what we were doing. Ride or Die.” – STEVE AOKI

Peter Perrett - former frontman of The Only Ones - releases his debut solo album How The West Was Wonon June 30th through Domino.

Perrett, whose incisive songcraft and sardonic drawl made him one of the most distinctive voices of the Seventies hasn’t released any music for 20 years. Bearing in mind his most famous song began “I always flirt with death” (‘Another Girl, Another Planet’), this is one comeback that nobody saw coming.

In the hands of certain songwriters, a story of resurrection and redemption might ring a little hollow, but when the songwriter is Peter Perrett, the usual rules have never applied.

Perrett makes each song on How The West Was Won sound natural and effortless, as though he were continuing a briefly interrupted conversation rather than picking up the threads of a solo career that faltered two decades ago. He claims to have barely touched a guitar in the decade between The One’s 1996 album Woke Up Sticky and the 2007 reunion of The Only Ones; with Perrett, a hiatus could so easily turn into a hibernation. Yet Perrett’s familiar voice sounds like it simply stepped out of the room for a few minutes and popped back in again.

Backed by his sons - Jamie and Peter Jr. on lead guitar and bass respectively - and produced by Chris Kimsey (The Rolling Stones), Peter’s intuitive feel for words; his flair for idiosyncratic metaphors and his deadpan wit are all still as sharp as ever.

As demonstrated perfectly by the title track and album opener which Perrett shares today. It finds him railing against American imperialism and celebrity culture. The video is directed by Focus Creeps (Arctic Monkeys/King Krule) and features Peter’s band with whom he recorded the album

The songs on How The West Was Won examine complex emotional terrain and extreme human behaviour, shot through as always with wry self-analysis. In a sense the album is a Perrett family affair: there are love songs (‘An Epic Story’, ‘C Voyeurger’) from Peter to his wife of 47 years Zena. On ‘Something In My Brain’, Perrett discusses good choices, bad choices and ultimately the only choices that will guarantee survival. There are also songs where Perrett opens his curtains and stares out into a much-changed world (‘Man Of Extremes’, ‘Sweet Endeavour’).

How The West Was Won finds Perrett with energy in his blood, rediscovering the importance of rock’n’roll. Having turned 65 over the weekend, he has a fire burning inside him again, and a determination not to blow what could be his last chance.

Tracklisting:

How The West Was Won

An Epic Story

Hard To Say No

Troika

Living In My Head

Man Of Extremes

Sweet Endeavour

C Voyeurger

Something In My Brain

Take Me Home

How The West Was Won is available to pre-order on deluxe LP (coloured vinyl, gatefold sleeve, booklet and black polylined sleeve), standard vinyl (gatefold sleeve, booklet and black polylined sleeve), CD (gatefold wallet sleeve, booklet) and digital.

Additionally, the Dom Mart edition of the deluxe LP features a signed print – limited to 250 copies.

16/03/17

Platinum Tips + Ice Cream(scenes from the water park) is new from Royal Trux. The songs were written over a span of time as wide as eagle’s wings - but the recordings are new, live, unrehearsed and were presented in real time to a few thousand people in California and NYC. Performance art? Yes! But only because, unlike so many other aural “content providers,” Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema are true artists writing their own futures into the present. This was, and will always be, Royal Trux.

This new/“live”/old song/new performance album is yet another chapter in one of the best books out there. Release #647, corresponding to the Cali penal code stating that Prostitution is against the law. Just a reminder so that they didn’t forget.

It’s been a minute since Royal Trux went about making a record in 1-2 days, but they got that system on lock, and once again we see them setting parameters and adhering to them for maxx impact. Platinum Tips + Ice Cream was made in two days…one in Cali and one in NYC. The hold up came when listening back to the “live” qualities, which had been compromised the “AI” of modern, presumptuous (read: “spellcheck”) sound gear. Going back to undo the “smart changes” was tedious, yet imperative - bringing the actual experience and qualities of the performance, the rawness that could be felt and heard LIVE, to a finished form. These recordings conjure the early feral spirit of the band devouring the sophisticated sound of the later years and coughing up a motherfucking hairball of sound.

Royal Trux has always played with the idea of “expectation” like it was a new toy at Christmas, and year in and year out wiped it out like the face of an old teddy bear. For them, a touchdown was best achieved in reverse, via counter-intelligent means. It is fucking INSANE to hear how much that is still the case. This isn’t a butterfly mounted in amber; this is the sound of life….people getting through their set by any means necessary. Thoughts are flying in a million different directions, but staying with the plan is the number one rule. As the rhythm punches, the scabrous tone of Jennifer’s vox is matched only by Neil’s harsh, stinging guitar volleys – and the mad filters passing through the Bass Station. A personal playlist of hits rolls out – and not all rockers, but some slower jams and moments of deep heavy. But no “Back to School”?!? Well, that’s why there are more Trux shows coming up. And like they say, every night is gonna be a great night.

Wrapped up in a Truxian collage scrapping together the crazy quilt of time in their Royal-iverse, which in the light of this reunion is now folding back over itself, Plantinum Tips + Ice Cream collects 12 Royal Trux non-sequiturs in tribute not only to the past but the unending nature of the future.

With Best Troubador, Bonnie 'Prince Billy pays homage to a long-time and forever hero, the late Merle Haggard. A singer who, some 25 years previously, first performed in public by playing a Merle Haggard song, Bonny has often cited Merle's work in performance, on records and in conversation with anyone who was around, even talking to Merle himself for Filter magazine in 2009.

Merle's body of work was considered by Bonny for a record such as this for some time, but his passing in April of 2016 almost put a stop to it. The goal was to participate in the handing forward of the songs of a living legend, as Merle had done so many times in his own career. Writing for Juan and Only in 2012, Bonnie put it this way:

"Merle Haggard is a channeler who has paid ample tribute to those that came before him. He has demonstrated explicitly and implicitly his standing on the shoulders of Tommy Duncan/Bob Wills, Jimmie Rodgers, Floyd Tillman, Lefty Frizzell and many others. There are songs in his catalogue that seep solidly into the headspace of Kentuckians who grew up when I did, and beyond through his vast influence on the George Straits, Dwight Yoakams, Alan Jacksons, John Andersons, Toby Keiths, and too many others. He is not the original, but he may be the most significant junction."

With Merle gone, some of the impetus of the project was in peril. A plan to make the album in Nashville studios was abandoned. The songs still called to be played again, however - and so sessions were endeavored at home, capturing feeling, memory and new expression in familiar confines with the full-hearted playing and singing of the Bonafide United Musicians: Van Campbell, Nuala Kennedy, Danny Kiley, Drew Miller, Cheyenne Mize and Chris Rodahoffer, with special guests Mary Feiock, Emmett Kelly, A.J. Roach and Matt Sweeney.

The songs sung on Best Troubador are pulled from all over - from Haggard's 3rd album in 1967 through to his 47th in 2011 - but this is no simple hits compilation. Capable only of occupying a

shared space between himself and Merle Haggard, Bonny chose personal favorites, singing the songs he wanted to sing, to find Merle and himself together in the music. Only two of Hag's thirty-eight (!) country number ones are included, and only two others that charted at all. Seven of the sixteen songs are from his later period, after his long run at the top of the country charts had ended, but before encroaching mortality could finally cease the singular and indefatigable creativity of Merle Haggard.

Best Troubador flips through his song book, landing on pages unmoored from their time and located anew. Moving from 1978 to 1969 to 2003 to 1981 allows the album to circle Haggard's music in a simulation of thought and memory, slipping around from spot to spot as if they were discrete impressions, unknown but knowable yet. Dedicated to new life and old, Best Troubadoris wistful and bittersweet and no lament at all but a tribute instead, for the triumph of a life spent in unending pursuit of the goal: new and expressive music, as our inspirations and heroes once sang it.

Excited about Best Troubador and just can't wait until May? Well, boy, do we have a surprise for you! Bonnie 'Prince' Billy is joined by frequent collaborator Oscar Parsons in a virtual reality video for Merle Haggard's classic "Mama Tried’. Presented in glorious 360 degrees of virtual reality, watch Bonnie 'Prince' Billy ride the wave of the future! Headset viewing is exclusive to the Vimeo app on your smartphone! However, monoscopic 360° playback (without a headset) can occur on the Vimeo site or embedded for desktop browsers and android mobile browsers HERE.

Real Estate have shared “Stained Glass,” their second track from the forthcoming In Mind out March 17. Last week the band posted a silent clip of the video featuring guitar tabs and keyboard parts, encouraging fans to create their own instrumental interpretations of the song before it became available to the public. Today, they’re pleased to share the full version of “Stained Glass” along with the original tutorial video. This is the second tutorial video release for Real Estate, following up on the fan favorite tutorial for “Crime” from their 2014 release Atlas.

Frontman Martin Courtney also recently sat down with NPR Music's Bob Boilen for a standalone episode of All Songs Considered, discussing everything from the new album's Abbey Road influences, the origin of "Darling," to his recent fatherhood. Listen here.

Real Estate kick off an extensive North American headline tour next month. They've also added a second Brooklyn Steel show by popular demand and will make stops at SXSW and Coachella. Full dates below. More SXSW events to be announced soon.

In Mind is available on CD, LP and digitally. An exclusive limited edition deluxe LP (very few copies left!) featuring heavyweight colored vinyl, gold foil imprinted packaging (pictured below), and a slipmat, is available to pre-order from Domino Mart. All pre-orders from Domino Mart and iTunes pre-orders will come with an instant download of “Darling” & “Stained Glass.”

Alex G is pleased to announce his new album, Rocket, is set for a May 19th, 2017 release.

Rocket is the Philadelphia-based artist’s eighth full-length release—an assured statement that follows a slate of humble masterpieces, many of them self-recorded and self-released, stretching from 2010’s RACE to his 2015 Domino debut, Beach Music. Rocket’s sessions began shortly after Beach Music’s ended, with Alex tracking songs at home, by himself and with friends, in the gaps between a hectic 2015 and 2016 touring schedule. Rocket was mixed by Jacob Portrait (Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Bass Drum of Death), who also lent his hand to Beach Music, giving the album a fine-tuning that retains the homespun personality of earlier efforts.

Alex G will be playing a special album release show in Brooklyn, New York, on Thursday May 18th. The show will be at The Park Church Co-Op, and tickets go on sale this Friday here. Also announcing today is an all-ages hometown Rocket show on July 8th at Union Transfer in Philadelphia, PA. Tickets go on sale this Friday here. Both shows will feature special guests.

Burberry premiered its February 2017 collection for men and women, at its Makers House show venue in London on Monday night. Anna Calvi performed the show’s live soundtrack from a balcony overlooking the runway, accompanied by her band and members of the Heritage Orchestra & Choir. Her set list included her new track ‘Whip The Night’ and a cover of Christine & The Queen’s ‘iT’ and is available to purchase on iTunes and can be streamed HERE.

The ‘Live For Burberry’ EP features a number of special previously unheard tracks and reworkings of some familiar Anna Calvi originals. Receiving its worldwide premiere at last night’s show, ‘Whip The Night’ was created by Anna for the illustrious Robert Wilson’s forthcoming theatrical production ‘The Sandman’, starting this May in Dusseldorf. ‘Nathaniel’ shows off Anna’s guitar prowess and was written specifically for Burberry and ‘iT’ is a cover of Christine And The Queens’ glorious original (performed in front of front row attendee Heliose Letissier, filmed joining in HERE).

16/02/17

When West Country feedback merchant Dave Pearce resurfaced in 2015 with his first new music in more than a decade, it provided the ideal opportunity to introduce his out-of-print back catalogue to a whole new audience. Following the excitement generated by the re-release of Further, Chorus and Distance last year, Domino are reissuing three more of his peerless early works – the self-titled debut, New Lands and Mirror – available on the 14th of April, 2017.

Flying Saucer Attack’s self-titled debut album, released in 1993, was commonly known as ‘Rural Psychedelia’ – an apt description for the rough-hewn soundscapes they crafted. These bedroom recordings made a virtue of the otherworldly, hissy mechanics of four-track cassette-to-vinyl duplication. Pearce realised that you didn’t need to layer 16 guitar tracks in an expensive studio to make a big noise. Recording directly on to a four-track resulted in a thick, distorted, abrasive sound that suited his needs perfectly.

New Lands, released in 1997, was album proper No 3, described by Pearce as “phase two” of the FSA project. It found Pearce operating alone and finally realising the guitar sound that had been in his head all along. “Something like AR Kane’s god-like Up Home!,” he revealed in an interview at the time. It was a stark and often challenging listen (Pearce stated in one interview that it was originally going to be called Fuck You!), yet utterly beguiling.

Mirrorwould turn out to be Pearce’s final offering as FSA for 15 years, but at the time of its release in 2000 it felt like the start of something exciting and new – it was seen in some quarters as one of the first great records of the millennium. Sonically, it was Pearce’s most accessible and melodic album. “His sombre, acoustic folk still recalls the gentle melancholy of Nick Drake,” said the Pitchfork review, “but for the first time, the melodies and lyrics can be clearly deciphered.”

This move into thrilling new sonic territories should have pointed the way forward for Pearce – instead, until his surprising comeback, it was a full stop on a brilliant and idiosyncratic career.

This is the first time that FSA and Mirror have been released by Domino. FSA vinyl will be available in a board mounted ‘tip on’ gatefold sleeve. The artwork for Mirror is replicated from the original Flying Saucer Attack edition. The albums will all be available on heavyweight vinyl (with download cards), CD & digital formats.

Animal Collective announce The Painters EP, a new companion release to last year’s album Painting With. The EP will be available digitally this Friday, February 17, almost a year to the date of their 10th studio album’s release. Pre-order the CD and 12” exclusively from Animal Collective’s store.

The EP contains three new and original tracks recorded during the Painting With era, and also includes a studio recording of “Jimmy Mack” (made famous by Martha & The Vandellas), a cover performed on their recent tours. Watch a lyric video for the opening track "Kinda Bonkers" below.

All pre-orders receive an instant download of “Kinda Bonkers” and a download of the EP this Friday, February 17. The EP features artwork by Brian DeGraw, as pictured below, who supplied the original portraits and artwork for Painting With.

The band return to the US & Canada in May 2017 for headlining live dates including a show at the new venue Brooklyn Steel in Brooklyn, NY. This follows on a recent winter tour of Florida and an Animal Collective-curated three day camping festival in Big Sur, CA this past autumn. Find all the dates below.

South London trio Little Cub will release their debut album Still Life on 28th April on Domino. Marrying a wry, worldly and subversive form of diarist lyricism with sumptuously evocative electronic production, Still Life announces the arrival of a band at once deeply in tune with the greatest traditions of progressive, homespun British pop music and at odds with the increasingly vacuous pop culture they are born into.

Following the release of its first tracks ‘Loveless’ and ‘My Nature’, the band have shared the album’s opening track and first official single, ‘Too Much Love’. Watch the video for the new single, directed by Lily-Rose Thomas, below.

“’Too Much Love’ is a song about about cynicism. For the video, we took a bunch of our experiences and experiences of our friends and reset them into a sort of modern day morality tale based around where we live. Except, there is no moral really,” quotes vocalist Dominic Gore. “The decisions, good or bad, all live in the grey area where I think most of us reside. Like a Groundhog Day where no lessons are learnt and nothing really changes.”

Little Cub is Dominic Gore, Duncan Tootill and Adrian Acolatse. Whilst now residing and writing in Peckham, their story begins in the banker-belt ennui of Dorking, Surrey, the sort of faceless suburban hinterland that J.G. Ballard was obsessed with. It was in this less than illustrious setting that Gore and Tootill first met by chance. The two hit it off over a shared love of James Murphy's seminal DFA Records, early Aphex Twin and New Order and before long began meeting up to share ideas for original songs alongside Ady Acolatse, whom Gore had met on a night out in the blare and glare of Fabric nightclub the previous summer.

What emerged from the bonding of the trio’s mutual ethos’ is the warm, dynamic, modular sound of Still Life, with elements of house, techno and ambient reflective of the group's evolving taste coalescing with fruits of a shared jazz background and indie sensibility to provide the perfect landscape for Gore's tight, almost hymn-like verses on the trials and tribulations of 21st century living.

Still Life was produced by Little Cub and mixed by the band, Oli Bayston (Boxed In) and Alexis Smith. It will be released on limited deluxe 12” gold vinyl, including album download card plus seven bonus remixes by the band, via Domino Mart, CD and digitally.

The band will celebrate the release of Still Life with a London headline date at The Lexington on Tuesday 9th May. Tickets are on sale now via the link HERE.

Yorkston/Thorne/Khan release their new album Neuk Wight Delhi All-Stars on 7th April. Itfollows the band’s debut album, 2016’s critically acclaimed Everything Sacred, and presents a confluence of currents, among them the north Indian sarangi; jazz-tinged bass, reminiscent in places of Danny Thompson; acoustic guitar that owes a debt to Elizabeth Cotton, Dick Gaughan and Mississippi John Hurt; and three very different vocalists - James Yorkston (East Neuk of Fife), Jon Thorne (Isle of Wight) and Suhail Yusuf Khan (New Delhi).

The first track to be shared from Neuk Wight Delhi All-Stars is ‘False True Piya’ – mingling traditions as diverse as Britain and India via the Appalachian Mountains.

“Piya is a word in the Hindi language, meaning beloved,” explains Khan. “The Hindi lyrics of the song were composed and written by me. They talk about a lover who is longing for a beloved, devastated by pain. A point comes when the lover starts hallucinating that the beloved has arrived and starts having conversations with this hallucination. There is a strange feeling of dark happiness: the beloved is there, but only as a hallucination.”“When Suhail explained the Hindi lyric to me,”Yorkston continues, “it reminded me of the great old song The Daemon Lover, also known as The House Carpenter, so I sang a fragment of Annie Watson’s version to introduce the piece.”

This harmonious and singular collaboration can be found across all of Neuk Wight Delhi All-Stars, and in fact, YTK’s Everything Sacred may be the only precedent. “The combination of a singer-songwriter, a jazz bassist and an Indian classical sarangi player is totally unheard off,” says Khan.

A collection of traditional Indian and UK folk songs, beautiful originals and idiosyncratic covers, Neuk Wight Delhi All-Stars does not only bring together Indian classical music and jazz, then, but kosmische too; Yorkston also cites dub reggae, Uilleann pipes and the Madagascan guitarist D’Gary as influences. That breadth, says Thorne, is critical: “I think YTK is a fine example of how music operates without boundaries as a common international language and a source of cross-cultural unity. It’s an important message in the times that we live in.”

Produced by YTK and recorded entirely onto 24 track 2” tape at Analogue Cat studios in Northern Ireland by Julie McLarnon, Neuk Wight Delhi All-Stars comes after a period of steady touring for the band (including incredible main stage performances at Green Man, Celtic Connections and Edinburgh International Festival, and tours in India, Spain and Ireland) and reflects the confidence and increasingly fluid interplay between Yorkston, Thorne and Khan. The trio will head back on the road in April for a headline UK tour.